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Does income inequality really influence individual mortality?

Author

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  • Øystein Kravdal

    (Universitetet i Oslo)

Abstract
There is still much uncertainty about the impact of income inequality on health and mortality. Some studies have supported the original hypothesis about adverse effects, while others have shown no effects. One problem in these investigations is that there are many factors that may affect both income inequality and individual mortality but that cannot be adequately controlled for. The longitudinal Norwegian register data available for this study allowed municipality dummies to be included in the models to pick up time-invariant unobserved factors at that level. The results were compared with those from similar models without such dummies. The focus was on mortality in men and women aged 30-79 in the years 1980-2002, and the data included about 500000 deaths within 50 million person-years of exposure. While the models without municipality dummies suggested that income inequality in the municipality of residence, as measured by the Gini coefficient, had an adverse effect on mortality net of individual income, the results from the models that included such dummies were more mixed. Adverse effects appeared among the youngest, while among older men, there even seemed to be beneficial effects. In addition to illustrating the potential importance of controlling for unobserved factors by adding community dummies (doing a ‘fixed-effects analysis’ according to common terminology in econometrics), the findings should add to the scepticism about the existence of harmful health effects of income inequality, at least in the Nordic context.

Suggested Citation

  • Øystein Kravdal, 2008. "Does income inequality really influence individual mortality?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 18(7), pages 205-232.
    • Handle: RePEc:dem:demres:v:18:y:2008:i:7
    DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2008.18.7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. The Spirit Level is junk science part deux (updated)
      by Tino in Super-Economy on 2010-02-15 13:08:00

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    1. Kravdal, Øystein, 2009. "Mortality effects of average education in current and earlier municipality of residence among internal migrants, net of their own education," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 1484-1492, November.
    2. Torkild Hovde Lyngstad, 2011. "Does Community Context Have an Important Impact on Divorce Risk? A Fixed-Effects Study of Twenty Norwegian First-Marriage Cohorts [Le contexte communautaire a-t-il un impact important sur le risque," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 27(1), pages 57-77, February.
    3. Petri Böckerman, 2013. "Top Income Shares and Mortality: Evidence from Advanced Countries," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 22(1), pages 57-69, March.
    4. David Brady & Michaela Curran & Richard Carpiano, 2023. "A test of the predictive validity of relative versus absolute income for self-reported health and well-being in the United States," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 48(26), pages 775-808.
    5. Trude Lappegård, 2008. "Family Policies and Fertility: Parents' Parental Leave Use, Childcare Availability, the Introduction of Childcare Cash Benefit and Continued Childbearing in Norway," Discussion Papers 564, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    6. Bakkeli, Nan Zou, 2016. "Income inequality and health in China: A panel data analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 39-47.
    7. Zheng, Hui, 2012. "Do people die from income inequality of a decade ago?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 36-45.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    mortality; income; Norway; multilevel model; inequality; registers; Gini Index; fixed effects; municipality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

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